The Blank Page
by Sideos
Summary: ONESHOT. Zim is given the homework assignment of writing a simple, one page story. Thing is, he's never written anything before in his life. Being creative is 'unirken'. Zim however soon discovers the joy of creativity.


_This is a long oneshot written in... well, I wouldn't say 'my usual style' but certainly a sort of back-cast to my old way of writing with long descriptive pieces and quick jumpings, as well as moving well over 200 words in one sitting. _

_The whole point of this oneshot is to hopefully tap into a sort of universal feeling of what people have when they go to write something. That idea of facing 'the blank page' is a tough one, and I'm not the first to try this, but I hope that you reading it can get a sense of what it feels like to me at least to try and put ideas down onto the page. _

_Anyways, read on yo, hope you enjoy!_

* * *

"Alright class, now, your homework." The obese man in the large chair shouted from the front of the class as the young teenagers groaned in their seats. "Quiet down! In order to try and encourage more, huh, creativity from your feeble minds, you will be working on writing your own story."

Most of the class groaned again in annoyance, one or two however looked rather happy to have such an interesting assignment. Dib looked across the room to Zim, who didn't seem to be bothered either way. In fact, it didn't seem like he was listening at all. He was too busy trying to perfectly balance a ruler on top of a pen.

Dib was currently going through that awkward puberty stage that all young boys went through. His pale skin however didn't have so many spots, even though he was thin and gangly and was most certainly still the 'crazy kid' at the school.

Zim had also grown, but not by much. He had no idea how that had actually happened. Still, all he'd done was just get better fitting clothes, the exact same style of course, nothing else had changed.

The large man tapped a few buttons on a keyboard in front of him and suddenly a single piece of A4 paper shot down from the ceiling and onto the desk of each student, making some yelp in shoc, but most were somewhat used to it by now.

Dib personally thought that the whole thing was utterly pointless when one could just as easily had the pieces of paper out, but than again, everyone ignored him regardless of what he thought.

Zim jumped and his ruler-pen balancing act went flying to the floor. "Wha, what is this?"

"You have to write a short story on the paper, Zim," The fat teacher said simply. "Or weren't you listen-wait, you never listen."

"What's the matter, Zim?" Dib suddenly teased from across the room with a smirk. "Can't your mighty alien brain come up with a simple one page story?"

"Of course it can!" The irken replied automatically, glaring back at his long-time enemy. "Zim can do ANYTHING!"

"Quiet the both of you!" The fat teacher shouted before the bell suddenly rang and the students practically fell over themselves trying to rush out the classroom. "I want your stories on my desk by Monday!" The obese teacher shouted as the students filed out of the room.

Dib quickly arrived at Zim's side. Upon entering high school, the two had quickly learned that between each other, the preps, the jocks, the bullies and the teachers, it was better to form an alliance and keep the rest of the threats off their backs. At least until they were outside, then they could wail on each other all they wanted.

"So what's your story going to be about, hum?" Dib pressed almost right away. "I'm betting something about a small alien who wants to take over earth." Dib loved being taller than Zim, it allowed him to keep inflicting the 'tiny' jabs.

"Shut up, Dib-stink!" Zim commented quickly, glaring at him, "My stor-ee will be better than yours could ever be." To be honest, Zim had no idea what the hell a story even was. Irken's didn't have stories, they had missions and facts and lessons... not stories. Perhaps by interrogating the Dib-stink, he could gain some light in this subject.

"What will your stor-ee be about?" Zim ventured with a curious tone.

"It'll be about a boy who's ignored by everyone but is on a constant mission to prove to the world that there's an alien living down the road from him who wants to kill everyone!" Dib ranted out suddenly.

"So... stor-ees are about stating facts." Zim mused out loud as they reached the lunch hall. "That seems easy enough."

"What? No!" Dib frowned at the irken as they sat down at their usual corner-of-the-hall table. Gaz was already there, drawing pad out, sketching something rather dark and gory and, by the looks of it, about vampires. She'd been on a vampiric kick lately after all. "Stories are about... stories!"

"What are you idiots bickering about now?" Gaz asked slowly, her voice rather monotone and her gaze not even looking up from her page.

"Zim doesn't know what a story is." Dib chuckled as Zim growled deeply at him.

"Shut up fool boy! Zim will find out all about this 'stor-ee' and will master it, as he masters all things!" the irken slammed his A4 piece of paper on the table and grinned. "And my stor-ee will be the most _amazing_ story of all time!"

"... do you even know what fiction is?" Dib asked with a knowing grin on his face.

"... sure I do," Zim replied, leaning back and looking away. "It's... a type of pencil."

Dib just burst out laughing at the alien, who was about to punch the human in the arm before Gaz cut in. "Fiction means writing that isn't based on a real event."

"I... make stuff up?" The irken seemed baffled at this idea. "What's the point of that?"

"To tell tales, teach lessons, gain insights," Gaz continued, still without looking to him.

"This is stupid." Zim replied loudly, a growl playing in his voice. "Why don't you just tell each other what you need to know?"

"Because... you just don't get it." Dib sighed and shook his head. "Just forget about it, Zim."

Zim did not just forget it however. All that day he spent his time thinking on one question, why did humans write stories? What was wrong with facts and figures? Why disguise meaning behind words when you could just tell someone what you wanted them to know?

By the time the irken was home, he was so engrossed in the question that he went right into his lab and slapped the A4 paper down, glaring at it. The page mocked him in it's purity, it's blankness, taunting his inability to create.

He drew a pen from his PAK and sat down, the paper in front of it, eyes focused on the page, the pen resting at the top.

And nothing. He couldn't think of a damn thing to start with. His mind thought of facts, figures, mathematical equations that he could fill the page with... but nothing that was just made up, new... _original_.

He growled and stood up suddenly, throwing the pen down. "CURSE YOU PAPER!"

The paper didn't reply.

"You think you can just sit there and... DO NOTHING!" Zim shouted again, his sharp finger pointing to the blank page.

Again, the paper said nothing.

Zim sat down again, gripping the pen tightly. "I WILL make a stor-ee..." He put the pen back onto the top of the page. "Now... think, Zim, think..."

He wrote a name. It was just a name he'd pulled out of somewhere, a distant memory maybe, but it was a name. He blinked in surprise, he'd done it! He'd started writing! HA! Dib would be so jealous already! Zim wrote something else, it was an action, simple, easy.

The irken grinned to himself, he was already on his way to mastering this art of writing that the humans held so precious!

He began writing more, ideas and thoughts just springing to him suddenly, so quickly in fact that he was almost wondering how he could possibly put them all down on the page. He hunched over his work, his eyes focused on the words his hand produced. Images seemed to explode in his mind, such things he had never imagined before.

And yet it felt so... natural. Fantastic ideas of machines and people and events flooded through him until he suddenly found he had no space left on the page.

Zim blinked as if the world was crashing back to him now. He looked to his mass of scribbles on the page.

Names, places, things, objects, ideas, questions, lines. They were splattered everywhere as if the dams of his imagination had burst open and flooded the white space like an unstoppable tide but like a tide, he saw that it was chaos. There was no order, no structure. Lines and objects crossed over one another, events happened without explanation.

His logic returned and began demanding some kind of organisation and planning to this imaginative mess.

Zim got another piece of A4 and now worked slowly, the tide being reduced to a steady stream. The story on his page began to become reshaped, the actors in his mind now having places, purposes and proper lines.

And yet, it felt... empty still. The world was there, but it seemed lifeless, dull and without colour. He began to think of how things felt, sounded and seemed to him and applied them to the text.

Soon he found himself writing such wonderful imagery of things he'd seen in his life. The songs of the C'Tan star vampires as they drifted through the void. The smells of the garbage planet Dirt. That feeling when he'd first walked into the classroom here on earth.

All of it seemed to pour out of him and it never seemed to want to end. It just kept coming, ideas, images, thoughts. Like clips from movies, paintings on walls... and with them all the urge to get them out of his mind.

This art, this creative writing, it seemed like such a powerful tool. He could see it now, as he continued to write across the paper. He could see why humans had libraries filled with books, why they told their stories of ancient myths to the far future.

And yet he could not describe it.

Why this was important, he didn't know, he just knew it _was_ important and perhaps that's all it needed. He recalled something Gaz had once told him, _art for arts sake_.

"Zim?" The computer announced suddenly and loudly. "Zim!"

"Wha-huh?" The irken almost jumped out of his seat. He growled, his thoughts being interrupted as they were. "What do you want?"

"The Tallest are calling." The computer replied simply. "Should I patch them through?"

The Tallest calling him? Probably for his bi-weekly report. For the first time ever, he felt annoyed at their intrusion. "I... suppose."

A large screen appeared before him and flickered into life. Standing there were the two Tallest, Red and Purple. They were sitting on a large and very comfortable looking couch, famously taken from the now demolished Vortian high command centre.

"Alright Zim, let's hear how you tried to take over Earth this week." Purple replied with a somewhat bored voice.

"Well my Tallest," Zim stood up, holding the story in his hand as he did, "This week I-"

"Wazzhat?" Red replied suddenly, pointing to the A4.

"This? Oh, this is a stor-ee." Zim was shocked at the pride in his voice. "The human's write them."

The Tallest looked strangely shocked before Red narrowed his eyes. "... did you say story? As in something you made up and wrote down?"

"Yes!" The invader grinned and held up his paper. "It is AMAZING, as is anything I do." A sudden urge overcame him, and he voiced it. "Want to read?"

The want for someone to give him an opinion, to view his creation was somewhat overwhelming. He wanted people to know of his art, of his creation. He wanted to hear how great he was, or perhaps, what they didn't like. He wanted to become the master of this new found passion and he knew that only through letting others see his creations would he know his weaknesses.

"Yes." Purple replied suddenly, "Copy it to us."

It took only a moment to scan the page and sent it to the Tallest, who quickly huddled around a small floating tablet to read the story. Zim waited feeling butterflies in his stomach, the first time he'd felt such things since his Invadership test so many years ago. It was strange, he usually wanted people to see all the destruction he caused, yet he felt so much more on edge with people reading something he'd created.

Red suddenly snickered. "This is stupid."

"Really stupid," Purple agreed and grinning as he watched Zim's face fall.

They quickly deleted the story and pushed the tablet away. "Your story is terrible Zim, don't take up writing." Red commented quickly.

"In fact, just destroy the whole thing." Purple added suddenly. "It's really bad."

"But... I have to hand it in, for school homework." Zim stated blankly. "The human's might get suspicious if I don't keep up my homework."

"Pff, you can afford to miss one homework." Purple commented quickly.

Zim felt like... something inside him had been hit. Hard. He nodded slowly and looked down.

"Writing is dangerous, Zim," Red said simply, "It gives people dangerous ideas. You want to be a good soldier, right? A good invader?"

Zim nodded without looking up.

"Then stop writing."

The call ended and Zim collapsed onto his chair, holding the delicate piece of paper in his hands. Why wasn't it good? Why didn't they like it? Why wasn't he allowed to write? He felt so angry and yet, far too devastated to even get up. All he could do was just keep re-reading the words of his little story.

But all the time he kept asking himself... what's wrong with writing?

The irken failed his assignment that Monday. He mumbled something about his dog eating it, everyone laughed and the teacher shouted at him for his lack of imagination. Zim wanted to shout back and tell him of the ideas he'd had since Friday, ideas about lands of fantasy and wars that never took place and people and things and... it was all pointless.

He barely said a word all day, Dib suspected that it was some new ploy to annoy him somehow. In reality, Zim just... didn't want to talk. He'd found something he'd loved doing, something other than destroying things and now he couldn't do it.

Zim found himself sitting under a tree during lunch, he didn't find himself up to sitting with Dib and listening to how his story was all about a boy who fought an alien menace and won and had a normal sized head.

"Zim?" The irken blinked and looked up at the sudden voice, his eyes landing on Gaz. "What?" He narrowed his eyes. "Did Dib sent you to taunt me?"

"No." She couldn't help but frown at him before looking to one side. "I heard you didn't hand in your story." Zim didn't bother answering, luckily, Gaz didn't need him to answer. "I know you wrote one. You never miss a homework assignment, you're too obsessed with beating Dib."

The irken narrowed his eyes at Gaz before slowly, and quietly replying. "So what if I did? It's unirken to write, my Tallest told me so... it was also bad. So therefore, writing is useless to me."

"Let me see it." Gaz demanded suddenly, holding out her hand. "I know you have it on you, don't even pretend you don't."

Zim narrowed his eyes at her before reaching into his PAK and bringing out a very crumbled looking piece of paper. In the end, he couldn't bring himself to destroy his precious piece of writing. He didn't know why, but this whole thing seemed to speak to him somehow. He'd _made_ this, he'd _written _this. This was his own and he felt so possessive over it that no one, not even his Tallest, could take it away.

He slowly handed it to her, scared again of her words and opinion. She straightened it out and looked over it slowly, her expression never changing. He knew it, she hated it, he should have listened to his Tallest and dest-

"Not bad." Gaz announced suddenly, handing it back to him, "A little cliche, but all first time stories are."

"... so you like it?" Zim's eyes widened slowly.

"Sure." Gaz shrugged.

"VICTORY FOR ZIM!" He threw his hands up, holding the paper above him before a realisation hit him. "Wait... it doesn't matter. The Tallest said I can't write anymore anyway."

"Oh screw them," Gaz replied suddenly, growling slightly as she did so. "Who can tell you not to write? Are they gonna come down here personally and take the pen and paper away from you? No, they're not. Here."

Zim watched with wide eyes as the girl began rummaging through her bag before bringing out a small journal and a pen and throwing the two into Zim's lap. The irken blinked before picking the two up. "What's this?"

"It's for writing down all the thoughts buzzing around in that tiny brain of yours," She smirked. "Turns out they might actually be interesting." She held up her own art pad and shrugged. "It's why I carry this around all the time."

"... do I have to tell anyone?" Zim asked quietly, looking to the small, simple journal in his hands.

"Nope." The girl put her own pad away before turning on him. "It's just your thoughts Zim. No one can take them from you."

Zim sat alone again under the tree, wondering just what he should put down in the small journal. He opened it to the first page and looked into it. There, on the blank page he could already see the endless possibility of what it could become. The ideas in his mind were going crazy, images, thoughts, words, phrases, characters, all dying to get out and be given life.

Zim took the pen from his lap, smiled, and began to write.

* * *

_So wadya think huh? A long read I know but I hope you enjoyed it and moreso, I hope you managed to empathise with Zim and the whole process of writing in itself. The feeling of having all those visions, sounds, words, characters buzzing inside and then unleashing it like a tide onto the page. _

_I also want to point out how the Tallest are quick to crush Zim's writing spirit. Plato once said that in the perfect society, there would be no poets, because poets can inspire and inspiration is dangerous. It makes a grim sense to me that the irken empire would work hard to eliminate the imagination from it's people. _

_References:_  
_C'Tan star vampires - From Warhammer 40k. Trust me, you do NOT want to be near a C'Tan... EVER. _

_Anyway, that's everything I think. I hope you liked it, give me some feedback on if you thought it was terrible or not, don't worry, I like feedback of any kind! Laters guys and thanks for reading!_


End file.
